A typical electrical connector comprises an insulating housing and at least one contact secured in the insulating housing. However, as electrical circuits become increasingly complex and with higher performance, it is typical that the plurality of contacts are secured in the insulating housing at smaller centerline spacing or in higher density. In personal computers and many office or business electronic machines such as copiers, facsimile machines, etc., it is typical that a large number of closely spaced contacts are secured in two or more rows in an insulating housing.
One typical example of such connectors is a so-called drawer connector. One connector half is mounted in a main body while another connector half is mounted in a module which is pluggable into a module compartment in the main body. That is, in certain types of electronic machines and equipment such as copy machines are designed such that there are two or more removable parts to be electrically and mechanically integrated for convenience of service and maintenance. One or more drawer connectors are used at the interface between the main body and the module to effect interconnection.
One typical example of such drawer connectors is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 276575/89. It is typical that hermaphroditic housings are used for connector halves in which the male contacts are disposed in a row and the female contacts are disposed in another row.
Another example of an hermaphroditic connector is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,737,118. A plurality of contacts of identical construction is disposed in a row in an identical connector housing. A pair of identical housings in a reversed vertical orientation with respect to each other are with the matable contacts engaging with one another.
The conventional drawer or hermaphroditic electrical connectors as mentioned above utilize identical resilient contacts normally curved in one direction which are resiliently biased when mated with one another. In other words, the contacts are identical and act as both male and female contacts. When a pair of such identical connectors are mated with one another, all contacts in one connector cause a pivotal action toward the contacts of the other and also the connector housings in which such contacts are secured.
Such conventional connectors operate satisfactory when the number of contacts is relatively limited and the connector is relatively large in dimension. However, in compact and high performance electronic equipment, contacts are normally secured in the housing in a plurality of rows with small centerline contact pitch. In such applications, contacts of one row are oriented in opposite direction to those of another row to compensate for biasing force to the contacts. However, such compensation is not possible when the contact are disposed in an odd number of rows, for example, 3 rows. Also, the insertion force of the conventional hermaphroditic contacts is relatively high and not practical for electrical connector having a large number of contacts.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an electrical connector having a large number of contacts with small spacing therebetween.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a low insertion force electrical connector assembly having hermaphroditic housing and contacts.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide an electrical connector having an odd number of rows of contacts.